


Trading for Touch: Epilogue

by suchadearie



Series: Trading for Touch [7]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 21:32:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchadearie/pseuds/suchadearie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the curse is broken and Belle and Rumple are once more united, they have to face what they did to each other in the early days of the curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trading for Touch: Epilogue

The leaves beneath her feet crunched with each step, and for a moment that sound filled her world and herself so completely like it had never been filled before. Only an hour before, it seemed, her world had consisted out of concrete and padded walls and bars - four bars on a window, four bars she had counted countless times, the only constant thing in a world that seemed to be suspended in soft white light. That was until that man came and sent her out into a world of color and air and sound, and told her to find Mr. Gold. And find him she did. In her world out of soft white light and bars, he was the first being to exist with a name attached to him. And he looked at her as if he was not quite sure that she really existed, as if the whiteness and blankness and the bars still clung to her and separated her from being... something.

"You're real. You're alive", he said, as if he knew her. As if she should know him. She added the warm brown color of his eyes to the color range of her world, and she followed him out into the woods. And just now, when the leaves crunched beneath her feet and filled her world with their sound, something else washed over her and flushed away the fog and the whiteness, and where before had been a blank space inside her was now a whole world and a name. Two names, actually. One of them felt right.

Belle.

She looked up, at the man walking a few paces in front of her, and another gap filled. Rumplestiltskin.

"Wait", she called out, but she had to say his name before he listened. She remembered. And he did, too. He remembered, had found what he had lost so long ago. His curse was broken, had been broken without her, without her help and without her doing. He was Rumplestiltskin, and he brought magic into this world that had been without it.

He took her pressed against a tree, took her rough and hard, after promising her not to kill the queen, took her with the same desperation, the same fierceness that she had taken him with, the last time, before her world dissolved into whiteness and a blank space behind bars. It was less an act of love, more the desperate, insatiable hunger to feel her alive, to feel her close, to feel her warm and breathing, and Belle welcomed the pain and the rawness of it, welcomed his body with hers to feel him and feel alive. They had all the time to do this slow and tender later. Now, they just needed to feel. She didn't care for the coarse bark of the tree digging into her back, she didn't care for his clumsy touches and his haste or his inability to form words. They would have time to talk later. They would have time to get back to their hurt and pain, time to realize what they had done to each other. Later. Now they just needed to reassert each other, needed to claw into each other, bite and scratch and scream, looking into each other's eyes, driving away the darkness, needed to feel life pulse through each other, life and cognition and the crunching pulse of two bodies trying to become one, two bodies so close their ribs could get caught and entangled in each other.

Belle was still stumped by the realization that she had been locked away for twenty eight years.

He took her back to his shop, and it didn't take her long to find out that Rumple was not only back, but unchanged. He toyed with words, and he toyed with people. She went for a walk, taking in the town that had not changed in twenty eight years - apart from the damage Rumple inflicted over the last few hours by releasing a wraith, or a ghost, or whatever it was.

No, nothing had changed. Her memories were back, and with them the scars on her soul. She suspected that it didn't matter anymore. Now.

He was back, and his curse was broken, and her curse was broken, and they had told each other of their love. So why didn't it feel as if it didn't matter? Why was there still that deep cut on her soul, a bleeding gash on her heart that reminded her of each and every desperate attempt to wake him out of the fog? Why did it feel as if she was still locked into that white, blank space, only that this time, the walls were blood red and she was raging behind the bars, screaming, and not a sound came over her lips? There was a scorching pain just beneath and below and between her ribs, and it got worse the farther away her feet took her from him.

She loved him. Needed him. And he needed her. Because this curse might be broken, but the darkness that had festered in him back in the enchanted forest was still there, still holding on to him, and he was holding on to it like it was a treasured thing, a possession so valuable he allowed it to breed in his soul. It possessed him. He needed her just as much as before. The pain subsided a little when she went back, and found him spinning, a sight so achingly familiar that it pierced her guts. He wanted to send her away, of course.

In the end, he took her home, into his house.

She remembered the one time she had been at his house, inside it, and he remembered it, too, judging by the way he looked at her when she sank down on the couch, still the same as twenty eight years before. He sat down in the armchair, where she sat back then, a painful reversal of their places. Belle knew that they needed to talk. Neither of them could. Neither of them was ready. For a few painful minutes, they just stared at each other. Then Rumple heaved himself up again, relying heavily on his cane, and sighed.

"I'll make us tea, alright?"

Belle simply nodded. Everything was better with tea.

She wondered if she should go to her father while she watched Rumple rummaging around in the kitchen. Rumple had told her about the accident, told her that Regina had made it look as if she died in that accident.

No, it could probably wait.

"Are you hungry?" Rumple asked, and Belle tried to determine if she was. Her body still felt as if it was not quite her own.

"I don't know?" It was a question, and Belle's skin grew hot.

He furrowed his brows. "Maybe cookies? I think I have some..." He looked around, a little lost, as if the space around him was not quite his own either. When he came back, carrying a cup of tea for both of them and a box of cookies tucked under his arm, he didn't sit down on the armchair again, but on her side, on the couch. Belle curled her fingers around her cup and looked down at it, at the caramel colored liquid, steaming hot and smelling of plums and cinnamon.

"When did your curse break?" She asked after a while, without looking up. He took his time with the answer, and when she couldn't bear the silence anymore, she looked up. Met his eyes.

"I'm sorry that I didn't get there when you tried to break me out of it.."

Belle had to swallow hard. Somehow the air around her felt like tar, and it was incredibly difficult to breathe. "I couldn't make you love me", she whispered.

"Belle..."

"Instead I did unspeakable things to you. Here, in this house." She sipped at her tea, to occupy her hands, mostly, and to hide behind her cup. When she set the cup down into her lap again, cradling it between her hands, Rumple reached over and took it from her, placing it carefully on his couch table. Belle felt his gaze on her as if he was touching her. And then he did, taking her hands and skidding a little closer.

"What I did to you was just as terrible. And earlier in the woods..."

Her eyes flew up to his face. He couldn't mean that.

"That..."

He interrupted her. "I hurt you."

"No you didn't."

"Belle..."

"It doesn't matter. Now is now. I needed to feel you just as much as you needed me."

He sighed, the only visible sign that he accepted her decision. Still she had no answer to her question, and she wondered if she would ever get one. Maybe it was too soon to go back to those early days of the curse, too soon to look at the pain.

“Do you think our cursed selves were…us? I mean, really a part of us, that was always there?” Asking that question felt like poking a beehive with bare hands and waiting for hell to break loose. Did she even want to know if her true self was capable to pick another human being so thoroughly apart? She had to look away from Rumple, because when she looked at him, she saw him sitting on the couch, exposing himself and his soul to her, saw herself sitting opposite him with that clinical look, dissecting him with her eyes, and, worst of all, liking it. She had hoped for him to remember her, had hoped he’d call out her name, and she couldn’t even hide behind a curse. She had been Belle, fully aware of herself, and she had liked to see him small and vulnerable and humiliated. She leapt to her feet, away from him, but there was nowhere in this wretched house where she could look without seeing him. She could not even look at herself without seeing him and the things she’d done to him. If she had been able to, she’d tore off her skin, shed it and scratched her flesh from her bones to escape the choking shame she felt.

“Belle…darling, what’s wrong?” He looked at her as if he had no idea. As if he didn’t remember and didn’t hate her for the petty thing she’d become.

“I… I can’t breathe.” He was at her side in an instant, wrapping his arms around her and holding her, pressing her to his chest and pressing kisses into her hair, whispering nonsense into her ear.

“Hush, sweetheart…it’s the shock…only the shock…” His embrace calmed her down somewhat, and made it worse at the same time.

“I wasn’t cursed”, she whispered, and a breathless sob broke over her lips. “I wasn’t cursed when I did this to you.”

Rumple hummed, and pulled her back to the couch, pulled her down with him and onto his lap, holding her close to his chest, and his fingers dug into her hip as if he was afraid she would flee if he let go of her. He rested his face in the hollow of her neck, pressing his nose to her as if he wanted to breathe her in, and Belle felt a tremor run over him.

“I understand what you were trying to do. You were fighting for me, in a land you didn’t know, fighting a curse you had no idea about, and you didn’t know how to get me out of it. Maybe your way of fighting for me wasn’t the best way…But I have long since forgiven. In fact, Mr. Gold forgave you right after that last time in your father’s shop, with that last kiss…He was starting to love you, and he was destroyed when he lost you, when you died…” Rumple’s voice became thicker with his speech, muffled, as if he had to press each word past a giant lump in his throat. “I lost you twice. And then a third time when Emma came to town and I awoke and I realized that you hadn’t been dead, that I had you, and lost you again…” He sobbed, his face still pressed to her neck, and she felt wetness on her skin. Tears, she realized. She threaded her fingers through his hair, scraping over his scalp, and pressed him to her. They were both so broken. When the curse broke, they broke along with it, and only now they started to realize that. Rumple gave off a hard, choking sound, and Belle didn’t recognize at once that it was a dry laugh.

“And then I ruined it all again by being the monster.”

She joined his laughter with a soft chuckle. “Oh Rumple. We’re both monsters.”

Rumplestiltskin grabbed her upper arms and yanked her away from his chest, with a look so fierce and angry that Belle, for a short moment, felt like being back in the Dark Castle, back in his grip after she had kissed him for the first time, and she needed a moment to realize that his anger was not directed at her. “You’re not a monster. Don’t ever say that.”

“But don’t you see? I liked to bring you down…I liked to see you humiliated, terrible as it was. A part of me liked hurting you.”

His fingers dug deeper into her arms, and his eyes pierced hers and didn’t let go of her gaze. It was almost as if he reached into her soul through her eyes and groped around to find something there, in her, something that told him that she was lying. And he seemed to find it, because he slumped back, loosening his grip, and exhaling with a deep sigh.

“No, you didn’t. If that was the case, you wouldn’t suffer so much because of one tiny incident that I forgot long ago. And don’t forget that I did the same thing to you.”

“You were cursed.” In fact, she had forgiven him for making her strip down and humiliating her almost the instant she left his shop. Well, she had forgiven _Rumple_. She couldn’t help but be more wary around Mr. Gold after that.

“And you think that makes it better for me? Do you think that makes it easier for me to forgive myself? Don’t dismiss my part in all this so easily.”

Belle looked at him, took in every single line of anguish on his face, and sadness grasped her and made her insides twist. She cupped his cheek, unable to put into words what she felt. Love and sadness and hopeless guilt.

“I could make you forget”, he rasped. “With magic.”

Belle shook her head. “No, Rumple. No magic. I don’t want to forget how cruel I’ve been. Only when I remember, I can avoid becoming like that again.”

He let go of her hip and touched his fingertips to her heart, hardly touching her and yet scorching her with the electricity pulsing between the two of them. “But you suffer, darling. I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy…sort of.” And to prove it, she bent down to kiss him, and make him, as much as herself, forget the pain. He slipped his hand upwards, to the back of her head, to hold her in place, hold her to him, and he opened his lips to her, to let her in and taste him, and claim him. Belle pressed her chest to his, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, his neck and his back to press him even closer, to drown in him and make him drown in her. But it was tender, this time, without the primal force that had united them out in the woods. This was just a tender kiss, deep, and wet, and gentle, without the ravenous hunger that had driven them earlier. That had driven them each and every time they had done this. Belle tore away from his lips.

“Rumple? Could we…” Somehow she was too shy all of a sudden, and she felt her skin grow hot.

“What, my darling Belle?” His gaze was so open, so apprehensive, maybe a little cautious around the edges, and Belle swallowed and gathered her courage.

“Could we do this in a real bed…and…slow…for a change?”

A smile spread over his face, and the tension slipped away from her and left her with nothing but relief and warmth. He nudged her gently to hop down from his lap, and took her hand to guide her up into his bedroom. It was awkward to climb the stairs hand in hand, with him handicapped by his leg and the cane, and yet, to Belle it almost felt as if they were two teenagers, climbing the stairs with the resolve to do it for the first time, to discover each other between the sheets and drown in the wonder of losing themselves in each other. It was also different when they weren’t driven by hunger. Belle felt shy again when they reached his bedroom, felt like a little girl when she stood at his bed and saw his shimmering sheets, and imagined to climb into his bed with him. Rumple looked just as nervous, his hands flittering over her but not quite touching, as if he didn’t know where to begin, or if to begin at all.

“Let’s just…let’s hold each other? And sleep?” she suggested, and he seemed almost relieved, and nodded.

Rumple provided her with a negligee (and she strongly suspected that he conjured it with magic, because why else would he have such a flimsy thing in his house?) and put on his own pajamas in the bathroom adjoining the bedroom. When Belle was in the bathroom to brush her teeth, she marveled over his enamel tub with lion claw feet – golden, of course – and she shivered when he pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck and asked her if she wanted to take a bath. After all, that was one of the things she hadn’t done yet since the stranger had let her out of the asylum. And all of a sudden she was very aware that she had to be filthy. That she had to reek.

“Would it be much of an inconvenience?” she asked, and Rumple pulled her back into his arms and almost smothered her with his embrace.

“Of course not. Darling, we have all the time of the world now.” And he set to prepare her a bath, scalding hot, with so much foam that Belle felt like sitting in a cloud, white and fragrant and sizzling. When she sat down in the tub, easing herself inch by inch into the water, Rumple fetched himself a stool to sit by her side and, after asking her if it was ok, bathing her with a soft cloth. He scrubbed her back, and took each of her arms in turn, rubbing along them, while Belle reclined, closing her eyes to just feel.

“Just a moment, darling”, he murmured, after finishing with her arms, and Belle nodded, too tired to open her eyes. Cool air met her heated skin when he moved, and then she peeked at him after all, and saw that he had taken off his pajama shirt. “May I?” he asked, pointing the wash cloth at her chest, and Belle nodded. Rumple soaked the cloth in water, and started to gently rub over her shoulders, and collarbones, over her chest and down to her stomach. He was very careful, as if afraid he would rub away her skin if he applied too much pressure, and it was almost as if Belle was floating in a huge soap bubble, only ever so slightly moved around when her bubble changed direction. He reached her hips, and rubbed down her thighs, and Belle’s legs parted of their own accord, waiting for him to touch her _there_. But he didn’t, instead he moved his stool a little more to the foot end of the tub and fished for her first leg, placing her ankle over his shoulder and lathering her calf with foam, rubbing it down with the washcloth. Belle sighed, enjoying the cool air meeting her skin. Little pearls of sweat formed on her forehead and her scalp, the water still too hot to be entirely comfortable, but it relaxed her muscles, and she was sure that she was slowly dissolving into a liquid state herself. She had no strength left to lift her other leg out of the water when Rumple was finished with the first, and he chuckled softly when he set it back into the water.

“I may turn to foam” she murmured, and Rumple pressed a kiss to her other ankle after placing it on the edge of the tub. Although Belle had been without will and power for so long, so often bereft of her decisions, of her power to make decisions, it didn’t trouble her now to give herself up to him and his ministrations. Maybe because he asked for each step on the way.

“May I?” he asked after finishing with her legs and showed her a bottle of shampoo, pointing it to her hair, and “Mmmh” she answered, smiling and nodding. He moved his stool to the head end of the tub, until he was sitting behind her. He put a blob of shampoo on his hands and dispersed it between his palms before he started to massage it into her hair, and Belle could say to herself, without a single doubt, that washing her hair had never before been this wonderful or sensual or erotic. He was gentle, every movement careful, as not to snag her hair, or pull it out accidentally. Maybe it would have been uncomfortable to let him care for her like this if it didn’t feel as if this was just as important and beautiful to him as it was to her. This was a different kind of love-making, one that warmed her just as much from within. After rinsing the shampoo out of her hair, he pressed a kiss to her temple.

“Ready to come out of the tub?” he asked, and Belle nodded. But Rumple had to help her and hold her, her world spinning fast and threatening to go black when she stood. “I think that was a little too hot”, Rumple muttered into her hair after wrapping her in a giant towel and making her sit on his stool. He rubbed her dry while she was sitting, and blew her hair dry with a ridiculously pink hairdryer, combing through her curls with his fingers. Belle let herself sink back against his naked chest, and turned her head to press a kiss to his jaw, and for a long moment, they just stayed like that. Eventually she began to shiver, and Rumple urged her back into the bedroom, and he turned his back to her so she could slip out of the towel and into the negligee. He had looked away, too, when he had held out the towel for her when she stepped out of the tub, and this oddly considerate behavior (after having taken her shoved up against a tree in the woods) warmed her heart, and made her sad at the same time.

“Don’t you want to look at me?” she asked, after slipping into the bed and burying herself under a heap of blankets. Rumple joined her, without putting his shirt back on, and Belle wrapped herself around him, afraid he might remember and leave her again, and if it only was to dress.

“Of course I want, darling. But I think you should rest.”

He was right, of course. She could hardly keep her eyes open, being so thoroughly relaxed and warm again, now that he was at her side, that she was more asleep than awake anyway. Still, she pressed open mouthed kisses to the hollow of his throat, and to his collarbones, and rubbed her face over his chest like a cat. And she slipped her hand into his pajama pants and found him hard, twitching at her touch. Rumple groaned when she started to trail up and down his length, and he sounded almost desperate when he spoke again. “Darling, please, you should rest. You’re half asleep…”

“Yes, and I feel as boneless as a sponge. But I want to feel you again…All of you…” She didn’t need to say more. With a moan, Rumple pulled her closer, capturing her for a kiss, and started to roam her body with his hands softened from bathing her. He had avoided her breasts then, but now he found them, and squeezed them gently, tickling her nipples until they were puckered little pearls and Belle moaned into his mouth. They had never done this slow enough to develop any kind of finesse, never taken the time to find all the places that were good, and so their touches were still clumsy now. They pressed their bodies to each other, and Belle could have happily stayed like that forever, were it not for the hollow ache inside her that demanded more. She spread her legs, wrapped them around him, and Rumple eased himself inside her after gently stroking her, rubbing the good places he remembered, and Belle soon sobbed in her need to feel more of him. He moved slow, rocking back and forth with his hips, until she clenched around him, feeling so warm and liquid and full and yet so empty, and she pulled up her knees and dug her heels into his back to urge him on.

“Rumple, please…”

He stilled, and locked his eyes with hers in the dim light coming from the street lamps outside, and a soft chuckle escaped him. “Slow and gentle, you remember?” 

Belle groaned, and scratched her nails across his back, making him hiss and his hips jerk, and all of a sudden all his restraints fell away and he pounded into her as if his life depended on it. Belle met each thrust with equal desperation, and came apart when he wriggled his hands between them and placed his fingertips at her clit. Rumple grunted when he thrust into her a few more times, deep and slow, and tensed when his climax washed over him. He managed to roll to her side, pulling her with him, and both panted as if they had been running.

“How do you feel now, my boneless sponge?” he asked, nuzzling her throat, and Belle giggled breathlessly.

“Like soup.”

“Good.” He kissed her temple, and Belle sighed, and slowly drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow would be another day to love each other slow and gentle. Only when she was almost fast asleep, she realized that he had answered not a single one of her questions.     


End file.
